Church heeds lessons of the ages

The following are excerpts of a sermon given recently by the Rev. Franklyn McAfee at St. Catherine of Siena Catholic Church in Great Falls, Va.

A certain depression has taken hold of Catholics today, caused by the clerical scandals of the past few years plus the overwhelming incompetency of so many bishops to deal with the problems or even to recognize a problem.

These things verify what Pope Paul VI said, that the smoke of Satan was in the church, and the church was undergoing a Good Friday. We worry about the church we love; we hear the media criticize her. We are confused.

No disciple is greater than his master, thus the church must endure the passion of her Christ and bear the jewels of His sacred wounds in order to be triumphant.

In the fourth year of the third millennium, as we stand in the night praying, hoping, pleading for the break of dawn, we must travel backwards in time across the present and yesterday to the start of the second millennium. Those years were just as depressing as our own, or even more so. The years prior to the year 1000 were, according to one writer, “one of the most lamentable periods, perhaps the most tragic, recorded in the annals of ecclesiastical history.”

The problems facing the church at that time were:

• Ecclesiastical discipline was in disarray. Priests and bishops did as they wished without fear of accountability.

• There was a general collapse in the sexual morality of priests and bishops. They flouted celibacy by marrying and having families.

• Simony. Religious offices were bought and sold.

These were the Dark Ages, the time of the barbarian invasions, a time when the courage and tranquil wisdom of the church were needed but she, herself, was disabled.

Preaching had ceased; the sacraments were neglected; theology was at its lowest point in centuries; education was almost nonexistent; the liturgy was poorly celebrated; and art and architecture were in decline.

The priests of the 10th century were, for the most part decadent and absent, but the bishops were no better. Indeed, the bishops were so bad that Pope Formosus actively gave consideration to excommunicating the entire English hierarchy.

At one meeting of local bishops, a monk came in — uninvited — and looking at the bishops assembled there, said, “Satan sends you his greetings.”

There were a few reform-minded bishops. One of them, Cardinal Humbert, said to his brother bishops words that today ring true: “We, the hounds of God, so far from barking fiercely and biting the robbers, go about yapping and wagging our tails, blind flatterers that we are, and, thus, we encourage every act of robbery.”

During these days of darkness and scandal, there were forces of reform at work, forces which grew more formidable and more numerous as the second millennium … approached. The lay faithful, weary from the moral laxity of the priests and their neglect of their duties, became enraged when the bishops refused to do anything about it. Across Europe, riots broke out in cathedrals and the palaces of bishops were attacked and vandalized, sacked and pillaged.

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